re: Someone needs to punch Ron Paul in the nose(Posted by Sparty1 on 2/5/13 at 11:19 am to joshnorris14)

quote:No he wasn't. He was a trained killer.

That is not a hero.

A hero is a man who creates not destroys.

This x1000. Sorry, but the outrage over RP's tweet is ridiculous. Chris Kyle killed hundreds of people and wrote a book gloating about it. The whole notion of "treating" PTSD at a gun range would be ridiculed if it weren't a "hero" who had been doing it. The military worship in this country is absurd, and it needs to be tempered. The military as a whole, and individual soldiers are far from perfect. A society that celebrates death and glorifies destruction has problems.

Did Chris Kyle deserve to die? Of course not. He was a human being that had every right to live. Paul said nothing out of line or disrespectful.

re: Someone needs to punch Ron Paul in the nose(Posted by LSUCouyon on 2/5/13 at 1:10 pm to prplhze2000)

To all the folks on here disparaging Chris Kyle for living by the sword, you better thank God that he made folks like him and the many millions of people like him that have put it all on the line to defend your right to spout your opinions. As to Ron Paul: He is an ass.

Who can say on this board at this moment that Chris Kyle didn't help some Vets with the Gun Range therapy? Ask some of them. Obviously most of the people disparaging Kyle's methods wouldn't know which end of the gun to point at the target.

re: Someone needs to punch Ron Paul in the nose(Posted by jerep on 2/5/13 at 2:33 pm to LSUCouyon)

quote:To all the folks on here disparaging Chris Kyle for living by the sword, you better thank God that he made folks like him and the many millions of people like him that have put it all on the line to defend your right to spout your opinions.

I get really tired of people telling me I should be grateful to people who decide they want a career in the military for whatever reason. If I decide that there is a real threat to me, my family and friends and that a war is justified, then I'll volunteer myself. If I'm too old, then in that case I would be greateful for those who went in my place.

I am greatful to the people who fought in the Continental Army, without pay for months, often without proper clothes, sometimes without hardly any clothes, without proper food, without combat pay, etc. These people did fight and die to provide their descendants with freedom. (And now we have squandered it.) By and large they didn't want to be in the military. When the war was over, before the treaty of Paris was even signed, the Army was disbanded because the soldiers wanted to get back to their normal life, and because the people of the country who valued freedom realized the danger of a standing army. These are the people who "put it all on the line to defend [my] right to spout [my] opinions."

That is quite a bit different from people wanting a career in an army which exists to do the bidding of our government, from volunterring to man the far-flung outposts of an empire or force foreign people, good or bad, to submit to the will of our government in how they run their own lives. The people in Iraq were no threat to our country and yet our govenment sent an army over there to attempt to put a puppet government in place because Saddam had outlived his usefulness. The result has been that a lot of innocent people got killed and now there are a lot more people in the world who hate Americans. If anything I am less safe for that, but more important to the point, I am less safe because our government has used this undeclared (and therefore illegal) war "on terror" to justify trampling on the rights of its citizens, and the government finds it so much easier because of the mentality that I should be happy that my rights are being "defended". I am supposed to be greatful for this "defense" of my rights, even if it is against my will, and even if here at home my rights are being trampled worse than any authoritarian government of the 19th would have ever even dreamed possible while being applauded by those who tell me to be greatful.

I don't doubt that some of the people who are in the military joined for what may have been noble reasons, but if they did, then when the fight is over they would be glad to be out, and not bragging about how many people they killed. And in any case, going and killing and being in danger of being killed simply because "our government asked them to" is idiocy and imorality.

Sparty is exactly correct.

quote:This x1000. Sorry, but the outrage over RP's tweet is ridiculous. Chris Kyle killed hundreds of people and wrote a book gloating about it. The whole notion of "treating" PTSD at a gun range would be ridiculed if it weren't a "hero" who had been doing it. The military worship in this country is absurd, and it needs to be tempered. The military as a whole, and individual soldiers are far from perfect. A society that celebrates death and glorifies destruction has problems.

It is impossible to defend my rights unless they are under attack. People in the middle east are not attacking my rights. People in the D.C. are.

When you can explain how what is done in the name of the "war on terror" results in my rights being defended, and how it is morally justified then I will consider being greatful. Until then, your repeated claim that I should be greatful is nothing but an expression of emotion empty of rational content.

quote:Other countries might hang you for making overly long posts, not here though.

Please name one where "overly long posts" are a hanging offense.

More to the point (if there was one), given the claimed authority of the president to kill anyone, including U.S. citizens, for any secret reasons couched under the umbrella of "national security", I suspect that an "overly long post" is about as well defined and as good a reason for killing people as is the "war on terror" or any of the various "crimes" which one might be accused of under the so-called "patriot" act.